Watertown officers recount Laurel Street shootout

Wednesday

May 15, 2013 at 12:01 AMMay 15, 2013 at 3:02 PM

Thursday, April 18 was supposed to be Watertown Police Sgt. John MacLellan's day off. But one of his fellow officers was on vacation, and MacLellan had volunteered to work an overtime shift to cover for him.

Adam Sennott

Thursday, April 18 was supposed to be Watertown Police Sgt. John MacLellan's day off. But one of his fellow officers was on vacation, and MacLellan had volunteered to work an overtime shift to cover for him.

It had been a strenuous week for the Greater Boston area. Earlier that day, the FBI had released photos of Boston Marathon Bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and that night, MIT police officer Sean Collier had been shot and killed on duty in Cambridge. But everything was ordinary in Watertown at around 12:30 a.m. on April 19, when MacLellan walked into the 7/11 in Coolidge Square and ran into a friend.

“We were talking about everything that had happened that night and week and I remember him saying ‘Thank God nothing happens here,” MacLellan recalled.

Ten minutes later and 1.4 miles away, a black Mercedes SUV driven by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was spotted in front of 61 Dexter Ave., and MacLellan was racing to the scene.

It’s been almost a month since seven Watertown police officers and an MBTA transit officer confronted the Tsarnaev brothers in an East Watertown neighborhood. The resulting gun battle on Laurel Street and Dexter Avenue pitted the officers against the brothers and their homemade pipe bombs and semi-automatic weapons. Hundreds of rounds were exchanged and MBTA Transit Police Officer Richard H. Donohue Jr. was severely wounded, but officers managed to subdue Tamerlan Tsarnaev before his brother drove off, killing him in the process.

Several of the officers involved spoke with the TAB last week in their first public accounts of the events that unfolded that evening.

Like MacLellan, Watertown Police Officer Joe Reynolds had no idea what to expect when he heard the SUV had been reported on Dexter Avenue. Reynolds was 20 minutes into his shift, patrolling Arsenal Street and School Street, when the call came. Reynolds also heard that another car, a Honda Civic, was on scene.

As MacLellan and Reynolds followed the two cars onto Laurel Street, neither officer had any idea who they were about to encounter. As soon as they arrived, the suspects opened fire.

Reynolds said he backed his cruiser up, opened his door and started returning fire.

As Reynolds backed up, the suspects began firing at MacLellan as well.

“As soon as I put my car in park, I got a round right through the windshield,” MacLellan said. “[It] subsequently goes right through my headrest of my cruiser, right between my shoulder and my head.”

MacLellan said he dove under the dashboard to use the motor as cover, as both officers radioed that shots had been fired. He then reached for his rifle, but his adrenaline was pumping and he couldn’t get it out.

“You have to do a couple of steps to get the rifle out, so in case the vehicle gets stolen no one can get in it and take the rifle out,” MacLellan said. “I couldn’t get it out.”

MacLellan could hear the bullets bouncing off his cruiser and knew he had to get out of there. He couldn’t get his rifle, so he used his cruiser to create a diversion so he could get away.

“I put it in drive and I start to get behind it, and I’m going to engage them” MacLellan said.

As MacLellan pulled out his handgun and took cover behind a nearby tree, his cruiser began rolling towards the two suspects.

Then the street shook. The Tsarnaevs had thrown a pressure cooker, the first of five explosives that would rattle the neighborhood that night.

“You could feel the blowback,” Reynolds said. “Debris came all over our faces and our heads. It set all the car alarms for all the side streets and everything. You could hear car alarms going off for almost a mile or something. You could hear them everywhere.”

As MacLellan exchanged fire with Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, one of them threw a pipe bomb in his direction. He took cover behind a plastic fence.

“It comes right up, about 20 feet from me,” he said. “I take cover for it to blow up, and it never goes off.”

MacLellan managed to get behind the tree and reengage the suspects. He sheltered behind the fence whenever he had to reload or whenever another bomb was about to go off. He never took his attention away from the pipe bomb that lay 20 feet away. It was one of two bombs that didn’t explode that night.

“I’m firing and I’m looking at the thing saying, ‘Does it change colors when it supposed to go off or something?’” MacLellan said. “I don’t want that thing to go off while I’m standing right here, but it’s the only cover I had and it’s the only place I could shoot from. So I had to take the chance.”

Three minutes into the firefight, other officers began arriving on the scene, MacLellan said.

One of them was Sgt. Jeff Pugliese, who had been leaving the police station after working late. He was on his way home when he heard that officers had located the black Mercedes, and he decided to check it out in case his fellow officers needed a hand.

As he approached the scene, Pugliese heard gunshots and his fellow officer told him to get down. After assessing the situation, Pugliese decided to cut through several backyards. He managed to get within 15 to 25 feet of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan and began firing at them.

“I could see them shooting at officers further down Laurel Street,” Pugliese said. “They didn’t know I was there. I fired a few rounds of ammunition at them.”

Pugliese said he could see the Tsarnaevs taking cover behind the front end of the Mercedes, and he fired a few skip shots at their ankles.

“You fire at the ground and you get the bullets to bounce up, trying to take their ankles out,” Pugliese said.

At that point, Pugliese said Tamerlan realized he was there and started moving towards him.

“He was about six or eight feet away from me,” Pugliese said.

As the two men exchanged fire, Pugliese saw that Tamerlan had a problem with his gun and couldn’t get it to work. Tamerlan then threw his gun at Pugliese, hitting him in the left bicep, before charging at the other officers on foot.

“I’m in the middle of the street with my gun trained on this kid,” MacLellan said. “I’m out of ammo, so I can’t shoot him. [But] he doesn’t know that. So I said, ‘Get on the ground, get on the ground, get on the ground.’ He keeps running right at me.”

While Tamerlan ran towards MacLellan, Pugliese was right behind him in pursuit.

As Pugliese wrestled Tamerlan to the ground, MacLellan’s first thought was that the suspect might have more explosives on him.

“I can’t let this kid blow up with a department member, a family member on top of him. I can’t let it happen,” MacLellan said.

He jumped on top of Tamerlan and started searching him for explosives.

“If he’s got anything, I’m going to rip it out of him,” MacLellan said. “I’m going to do whatever I can.”

As he and Pugliese struggled to get control of Tamerlan, MacLellan said he heard one of his fellow officers yell, “Sarg, watch out.” When he looked up, headlights were barreling straight at him and Pugliese, who was trying to drag Tamerlan out of the way.

“I yell, ‘Jeff get off, get off,” MacLellan said. “I disengage him, I’m hoping Jeff did because the car comes right over the pile. The body got hung up in the back tires, the Mercedes goes sideways, hits the side of [a cruiser], dislodges the body and takes off.”

After Dzhokhar ran over his brother and dragged him down Laurel Street, MacLellan looked across the street and saw Pugliese sitting across from him, unharmed.

“I’m like, ‘Oh, thank God,’” he said.

Dzhokhar crashed the Mercedes into Reynolds’ cruiser, but managed to shake free and drive off. Other police officers arrived and started shooting at the Mercedes as it drove by. In all, MacLellan said the shootout lasted a total of eight minutes. Tamerlan, though wounded, was still alive, but couldn’t speak.

“Just moaning,” MacLellan said.

Pugliese said Tamerlan kept trying to roll over, but they quickly handcuffed him.

“We didn’t know if he had anything on him, as far as explosives or anything else,” Pugliese said. “So to prevent him from rolling over I put my foot in the small of his back and held him down and called for an ambulance.” Tamerlan later died from his wounds.

As officers descended on Dexter and Laurel, MacLellan heard someone yell “Sarg, one of ours down, one of ours down.”

MacLellan ran over and saw that MBTA officer Richard Donohue had been shot in the leg. MacLellan said he ordered fellow officers to apply pressure to his wound while Reynolds came over with an oxygen bag and a jump bag.

They called two ambulances. When the first arrived, officers brought the wounded MBTA officer to the ambulance.

“The ambulance just felt like it was taking forever to get there,” Reynolds said. “Once it came we didn’t want the gurney to come out, so we just, we all picked him up by the arms and the shoulders and his legs, and we picked him up and we ran into the ambulance with him.”

After Donohue was loaded into the ambulance, Officer Tim Menton jumped into the driver’s seat and drove him to the hospital while EMTs worked in the back.

By this time, MacLellan said, the area was flooding with police from surrounding communities.

“I can’t be any more grateful,” MacLellan said. “As a patrol supervisor you call out and say, ‘I need help’ and all of a sudden, I blinked my eyes and I had SWAT teams walking through the intersection where we just had our firefight.”

MacLellan said he spent the next half hour setting up a perimeter around the area, but Dzhokhar had already escaped and wouldn’t be found until the following evening.

“This kid, I don’t know if he slipped it, or if he got out before we set it up,” MacLellan. “I’m not sure [how] he did it. But the biggest part is they got him the next day, and he didn’t hurt anyone else, and that’s all we’re looking for.”

MacLellan said he was relieved of his duties about two hours after the firefight, but stuck around until about 8 a.m.

He was then asked to go to a local hospital, along with the six other officers who participated in the gunfight, to speak with the Boston Police Stress Team. They all agreed, but first he had one other place he had to go.

“I said, ‘Chief, listen, I have to go home before I go to the hospital and wake my wife up, because if she wakes up and sees this crap going on and can’t get in touch with me on my phone, she’s going to have a heart attack,” MacLellan said.

He was then driven home, where his wife was fast asleep. After he woke her up, told her what had happened and assured her he was okay, he then went to meet with the stress team.

As patrol supervisor, MacLellan said he couldn’t be prouder of his fellow officers.

“Every Watertown police officer went above and beyond what they needed to do that night,” MacLellan said. “I had a great crew with me. There was no weak links and that’s why we did well.” He added, “A lot of heroics that night.”

MacLellan said he was happy Watertown police were able to stop the Tsarnaevs, especially after they allegedly assassinated Collier before the shootout.

“To me, it’s vindication that we caught these kids,” MacLellan said. “There’s nothing worse than to have another brother killed right next door.”

Pugliese echoed his sentiments.

“I’m glad we stopped them right there in Watertown, that they couldn’t go and injure anybody else anywhere else,” he said

Since the shootout, MacLellan and Pugliese have returned to work. Officer Reynolds has worked several shifts since the shootout, but has yet to return to his regular shift.